Extended Data Fig. 7: Modelling the onset and disappearance of the BEC.
Evolution of the gas in the dimple. Left, BEC onset when loading reservoir and dimple at constant flux ΦG in the guide, started by Zeeman slower switch-on at t = −0.7 s (same data as in Extended Data Fig. 2 but choosing a different origin for the time axis). Right, BEC disappearance after setting ΦG to zero by switching the Zeeman slower off. The first two rows show the temperature and atom number of the thermal atoms in the dimple. The last two rows show the BEC atom number and the estimated phase-space density ρD in the dimple. The solid blue line is the result of the fit of the BEC atom number with the model of Equation (10) of the Supplementary Information. The grey dashed lines are the results of fits with exponential growth/decay functions, which are used as input for Equation (10). The error bars represent one standard deviation σ from binning about four data points. For the BEC atom number, owing to the small number of data points, the error bars can be underestimated compared with the more reliable characterization at steady state of σN = 2,300 provided in the main text. The phase-space density is estimated from measurements of the atom number and temperature in the dimple in the same way as for Fig. 3.
